New York — Google has silently announced today on the Official Google Blog the latest search engine feature that allows users to easily search for particular TV episodes and sort the results by season in each series.
The newly released capability is available in the “Video” section of Google. All you have to do is just search for your favorite TV series like Mad Men or The Office, then click the “Show options…” button above the results. A panel is displayed on the left side of the screen with several options; you can click “Videos” to narrow your search to videos, and after that the option to search for “Episodes” instead of “All videos.”
Cleverly, Google is able to identify through its monstrous databases to automatically display how many seasons and episodes a certain show has within them even if you simply search for a show title. Television search engine startup Clicker has these features and more, but options are always welcome.
This is just catch-up on Google’s part, though. The search giant provides many pay-based and advertising-backed video sites. It includes YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, Amazon, Dailymotion, and network video sites like NBC.com, BBC.co.uk and AMCTV.com, among others.
“As more and more unabridged content is going online, we are making it easier to find the content you want by providing a more structured experience when you search for TV shows,” said Google VP Search Products & User Experience Marissa Mayer. “This week, we launched a way to search for specific TV show episodes as part of this effort. Now, when you search for your favorite TV show in Google Videos, check the left-hand toolbar for ‘Episodes’. By clicking on the links in the Search Options panel, you can browse by season to see all episodes, and drill down to see all sources for a specific episode.”
Considering that the number of episodes viewable online of certain TV shows can vary. However, it is definitely a very nice and long overdue feature that can help you find a TV show episode very fast and easy.
Presently, official services like Fox and Hulu dominate search results, though it does not take much effort to dig outside this copyright friendly bunch or to simply mask your IP address and watch them directly using any one of the thousands of free tools on the Web. Some searches do also draw up rather strange associated ads.